Intelligent lighting illuminates aerospace distribution center

Dassault Falcon Jet is a subsidiary of Dassault Aviation (France), the world’s leading aerospace company. After covering 65,000 square feet of distribution space with an intelligent lighting system, the 24/7 facility significantly reduced energy and maintenance costs.

Headquartered adjacent to the Teterboro Airport in Little Ferry, N.J., the 172,000-square-foot facility houses nearly 400 employees and includes a demonstrator-based flight operations department and DC, which holds a large inventory of Falcon jet spare parts. The management team searched for a more efficient replacement for the legacy lighting—a combination of metal halides and T8 fluorescents—that was driving up costs. In addition to excessive energy use, maintenance added another 10% to operating costs.

The team evaluated standard LEDs, LEDs with add-on motion sensors, and intelligent LEDs. The new lighting system (Digital Lumens, digitallumens.com) has improved lighting quality in high bay and low bay areas, and it can dim, turn off, schedule lighting, or dynamically adjust in low-occupancy areas where facility personnel enter and exit 30 to 40 seconds at a time.

“A lot of my job involves trying to save money and improve facility operations, so the biggest goal for this project was to save on electricity,” says James Mosca, facility manager. “As soon as we saw what we could be spending for intelligent LEDs compared to what we were spending for the metal halides, it was an obvious choice for us.”

While maintaining 30 to 45 foot candles of light, the facility has reduced its lighting-related costs by 91% annually, saving $53,691 in annual energy costs, $9,251 in annual maintenance savings and a total of 547,868 kWh per year. Mosca notes the new system’s lighting energy management software, which provides facility-wide intelligence, offers the ability to control all fixtures in all spaces and operational patterns and energy usage.

“Having the ability to change the schedules and the light levels anywhere in the facility is very helpful,” Mosca says. “Also, being able to see the amount of electricity used and pull data to show exactly what these new lights are doing for us is incredible.”